#2 DELAWARE – Scrapple Is Not A Word Game

I wanted to try the Mid-Atlantic breakfast delicacy known as scrapple. Delaware is the nation’s largest scrapple producer and RAPA, located in Bridgeville is Delaware’s biggest scrapple company.  Bridgeville has a big scrapple festival in the middle of October in case you’re interested. The RAPA website does not try to hide the ingredients in their scrapple recipe:   Pork Stock, Pork Livers, Pork Fat, Pork Snouts, Corn Meal, Pork Hearts, Wheat Flour, Salt, and Spices.  The mixture is then deep fried. How can you not get excited about that?

I needed a breakfast place in Northwestern Delaware that served scrapple. The choices were very limited but I decided on:

Drip Cafe
Hockessin, Delaware

AMBIENCE:  The Drip Café sits in a strip mall somewhere among the housing subdivisions of Hockessin. The restaurant is modern, airy, and visually appealing. It was about 25% full when we got there on a Monday morning and included a number of hipsters. Most people were drinking coffee and eating a pastry. We were seated in a little elevated section away from the main floor next to an elderly man. I’m guessing this was the non-hipster/dweeb sitting area.

4 out of 5 stars

FOOD:  I ordered the “Breakfast Bake” which was a dish made up of peaches, toasted almonds, and oatmeal baked in a spice custard, and served with maple syrup. Even though I had done my research I wanted to know the waitress’s opinion of scrapple. When I asked what it was, she grimaced and said that “people in Delaware seemed to like it”. She left and went to ask the chef about scrapple. She returned and said that the chef told her it was “sausage in a low form”. I ordered it.

I had a hard time finishing the Breakfast Bake. It was way too sweet for my tastes, especially for breakfast. It reminded me a lot of a peach cobbler.

Scrapple Close-up - Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside.

The scrapple, on the other hand was quite tasty. Probably something you don’t want to eat every day but I finished it with a smile rather than a grimace.

The Healthy One, who I think called the scrapple “disgusting”, had a Greek Yogurt Parfait with house-made granola, fresh fruit, and a honey drizzle. She thought it was quite good.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

COFFEE:  The coffee, coming from a place called the Drip Café, was very disappointing. The menu listed coffees from Congo, Kenya, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Columbia. But rather than pay $4.00 for a cup of one of these coffees we opted for the “house blend”.  Our pours tasted very bitter and worse than cafeteria coffee.

1 ½ out of 5 stars

SERVICE: The waitress was pleasant enough but not exactly the Usain Bolt of servers. She checked in with us every once in a while but seemed not exactly happy to be working that day. I did appreciate the fact that she went and asked the chef about scrapple. It took a long time to get our check and when it finally came, it was the wrong one. As I scanned the room to get her attention, I saw her going into the Women’s room while pulling out her smart phone. That was not a good sign that she would show up in the foreseeable future so I went to the counter and got things straightened out.

2 1/2 out of 5 stars

COST: $22.00 with tip. No sales tax in Delaware!

A FEW WORDS ABOUT HOCKESSIN:  Hockessin is a strange place. You drive along the road and see names such as Quail Ridge, Horseshoe Hills, and Valley View on brick facades with a road leading up to what I assume are houses and neighborhoods. I looked it up later and found that Hockessin has 45 of these subdivisions. There is no downtown that I could see, just a lot of these individual, well-manicured fiefdoms on what was once beautiful farmland.

BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

-         - Four mile hike in the Valley Forge National Park. When George Washington and his troops spent the winter here it was cold and miserable. When we were here it was hot and miserable with a “real feel” temperature of 110 degrees.

-          -Walking in circles at the King of Prussia PA Mall. Maybe we should just visit a mall in every state.

-   -An evening walk through downtown Easton PA, including a round trip walk across the Delaware to NJ. 

August 15, 2016

NEXT UP: NEW JERSEY